


Solace

by Valya (grandSolovey)



Category: BioShock
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 17:49:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1396948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandSolovey/pseuds/Valya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After learning the truth about himself, Jack seeks some respite and release. But there's always an ugly side to everything, especially in a town like Rapture. (Side story to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1067564">Batya</a>, mid-chapter 11.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solace

**JUNE 4, 1959 — 10:44 AM**

When Jack awoke in a tangle of sheets in the late morning hours, it was with a hammer-heavy pounding in his head and the scent of musk and cologne curling deep in his lungs.

Despite the dimness of his thoughts, he managed to recognize that the bed beneath him was not his own. It wasn’t until he heard the unmistakable plink of a piano from the adjoining room that he fully recognized why, or whose bed he had just found himself in.

Slowly, he lifted a hand to his face and squeezed his temples. It was an attempt to quell the thrum and beat in his head, though ultimately a futile one. This was a hungover pain, he was sure, but he couldn’t be certain whether that hangover had originated in whatever he’d had to drink last night, or whether it lay with whatever he had come here to forget.

Memories of what that had been, rows of black hiding a mountain of untold truths, came slowly creeping into the corners of his consciousness, heedless of whatever effort he spent in trying to put them out.

He needed to make himself forget again.

With a slow, gradual stretch and a long yawn, he pulled himself free of the sheets, tugged a robe over his shoulders, and tied its sash loosely about his waist before he went to find Fitzpatrick.

A bottle of wine was perched on top of the piano where a still-undressed Fitzpatrick sat and played. The melody wasn’t one Jack recognized, nor was it quite anything like any melody he did know. It was strange in Jack’s ears, off-beat at every measure, languid in its pace and yet possessing a deliberate weight behind every note.

“What is that?”

Fitzpatrick’s slender hands paused over the keys as he glanced back over his shoulder, greeting Jack with a half-cocked smirk.

“You never heard of Scott Joplin, have you?”

Jack shook his head as he stepped closer to Fitzpatrick. His education where the fine arts were concerned had been scant thus far, and most of what he knew in the field of music was only of composers from centuries past.

“That’s not a surprise,” said Fitzpatrick with a soft snort. “He called this a Mexican serenade.”

When his fingers struck the keys again, it was with greater force, with a heavier deliberation than before. The melody lilted higher and higher, round after round, yet its rhythm remained just as off-beat as before, just as languid and carefree, seeming almost careless if not for Fitzpatrick putting every note in its place.

Sheets of music were arranged haphazardly above the keys, looking as though they might flutter to the ground at any given moment. Jack could only guess as to whether Fitzpatrick was actually reading them. The notes were completely illegible to him, no better or worse than if they were merely black bars on the page.

Something twisted deep in his gut. Jack had to take a deep breath before he could pull his eyes away.

“What else can you play?” Somehow he managed to get the words out without a stammer.

Fitzpatrick snorted again. “That depends on what you want to hear... Just don’t ask me to play Cohen.”

Jack didn’t know enough of Cohen’s work to make any comment either way. Still, he found himself struggling to supply an alternative answer.

“Play something from the surface, then.”

There was no snort this time, but rather a laugh. “That really narrows it down for me.”

It didn’t occur to Jack until after he’d said it that the way he’d worded it, _from the surface_ , might be too great a tell for Fitzpatrick to miss; he’d been so concentrated on distracting himself from those black bars, he’d entirely forgotten to check himself.

Fortunately, if Fitzpatrick noticed the oddity of it, he made no mention of it. He began to play instead.

The pace of his earlier tune had been languid and off-beat, but this was even more so, enough that Jack was left wondering whether there was truly any beat to it or if Fitzpatrick was just making it up as he went along. (That wasn’t something he’d put past the man, in all honesty.) He quickened the pace until Jack could finally detect the pattern in each measure as it repeated upon itself, again and again, once again lilting higher and higher... 

There was something in the harmony of the notes, odd as it was, that jarred in Jack’s mind. He could think only of the black bars and wonder if this was how it was truly meant to sound—if this was how it was truly meant to be.

“I like it better when you play Rachmaninoff,” he murmured, letting his hands rest on Fitzpatrick’s shoulders.

The sound Fitzpatrick made then was closest to a scoff. “Of course you do.”

Still, he played on, fingers now gliding over the keys with far more grace and delicacy than before. It was a remarkable thing for Jack to watch, how effortlessly he could shift from end of a spectrum to the other, from heavily syncopated vigor to elegance and calm.

Unlike the others, Jack actually knew the name of this piece: _Lilacs_ , he’d heard it called. He hadn’t known what the word meant until he happened to ask Tenenbaum one day, and her singular answer of “flowers” was just short of a satisfactory explanation in his mind. He wondered what kind of flowers there could be that would evoke this sort of sound, what they might look or smell or feel like. If he closed his eyes, it sounded less to him like flowers and more like droplets upon still waters, each one rippling outward as it fell, overlapping and entwining and intensifying until the surface fell still once again.

Eventually, Fitzpatrick stopped playing. It wasn’t until then that Jack realized he’d been leaning heavily on him, grip unconsciously tight on his shoulders.

“You’re still tense, huh?”

It took a startling amount of effort for Jack to let go. He managed to murmur an apology, though he was barely conscious of the words.

Fitzpatrick made no reply, at least not verbally. He turned in his seat instead, took one of Jack’s hands from where it had still been hovering near his shoulder, and ran his long fingers over it as though feeling out every inch of his skin.

“You’re just big all over, aren’t you...”

Jack very nearly blushed before he realized Fitzpatrick was still staring pointedly at his hand. His fingers curled as he let Fitzpatrick turn his palm face-up.

“But you’ve never done much work with them, have you?”

It took Jack a moment to come up with some sort of response to that, perhaps a moment too long.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t put them to good use.”

Some days ago, perhaps he might have been able to employ such a line without the slightest care in the world. But in that moment it felt hollow, almost forced, as if those were the words of a man whose identity he had no right to claim.

Again, however, Fitzpatrick seemed not to notice. He only gave Jack a soft laugh for the attempt.

“With hands like these, you’d be good at the piano too, I bet.”

This time, Jack did blush.

“Not half as good as you.”

“Mm, well...” The corners of Fitzpatrick’s mouth began to curl upwards into a slow grin. “Nobody gets to be _good_ without practice. Or, you know... If you’re impatient, they make a plasmid for that, too.”

His fingers skated over the skin of Jack’s wrist, as though feeling for track marks that weren’t there. Out of reflex, Jack nearly tugged his hand away—but then those fingers moved on, turning his hand back over again so Fitzpatrick could press his lips to his knuckles.

Jack felt a slow, heady ache begin to rise in the pit of his stomach, a sensation finally strong enough to push through the hammering pain in his head. But it was all he could do to watch as Fitzpatrick kissed his hand, over his knuckles, down to his fingertips and up to his wrist again.

It was when Fitzpatrick reached his wrist that he finally paused, looking up to meet Jack’s eyes with another curling smile.

“If you’re so tense, why don’t I give you a backrub?”

Jack watched Fitzpatrick dip his hands into the folds of his robe, splaying his fingers over the smooth plane of his stomach, and felt a new flourish of heat as the muscles in his abdomen pulled taut.

“Not feeling too partial to a backrub right now.”

Fitzpatrick just laughed again, laughed and leaned in to press another kiss just below Jack’s navel while his hands tugged at the loose knot keeping his robe closed.

“How about we skip to the happy ending?”

Jack might have thought to question him if Fitzpatrick’s searching hands hadn’t found just the right spot to push all question and doubt right out of his mind. He offered a groan instead, soft at first and just as low, though it gained in volume when Fitzpatrick bent down his head and—

“Shit—”

Fitzpatrick breathed another laugh as he looked up, as Jack’s hands gripped his shoulders again, as his own slender fingers curled around Jack’s swelling cock and slowly stroked up and down.

“So you’re more partial to this, I take it?”

The sight of it was almost too much for Jack to take, combined with the sensation of him kissing upwards along his shaft, his bottom lip catching and dragging on the tip. Almost, but not quite.

“Kyle—”

For what time they’d spent together, the name still sounded foreign, seldom-used on his tongue. But it was all Jack could think to say as he watched the man take his cock into his mouth, swallow him down and pump his mouth over as much of him as he could take—

“Fuck, _Kyle—”_

Fitzpatrick pulled back after that, looking up at him again with reddened lips. It wasn’t until Jack felt him take his wrist in hand that he realized he might have been gripping him a little too hard again.

“Yeah?”

The true question— _what do you want?_ —was both palpable in his tone, tinged with mild annoyance.

Jack swallowed hard.

“Bed.”

Words hadn’t failed him in quite such a spectacular way in some time. But Fitzpatrick got the message, if the smirk that tugged at his features was any indication.

“Meet you there.”

Out of the corner of his eye Jack managed to catch Fitzpatrick reaching for the wine bottle, but he was far too busy heading back to the bedroom to catch much more than that. He’d barely shrugged the robe off his shoulders when he did finally turn back, only to be met with a crushing kiss and Fitzpatrick’s long limbs wrapping around as much of him as he could manage.

“Fuck—”

The word came out with a shuddering breath as Jack jerked his head back, struggling to quell the sudden and unexpected surge of adrenaline that flooded his nerves. Fitzpatrick was hardly discouraged, of course; to the contrary, he laughed and tilted his head to kiss Jack’s neck, arms wrapping around his shoulders as he pushed the both of them back towards the bed.

“Don’t need to be so jumpy...”

Jack wouldn’t have thought to put it like that. Then again, he didn’t seem to share most of the thoughts in Fitzpatrick’s head.

If only he did, then perhaps he might have a better idea of how to deal with what thoughts continued to plague him even now, even at a time like this.

He let himself be pushed back onto the bed, pulled himself back onto the mattress, and watched Fitzpatrick take a long swig from the bottle still in his hand as he settled against the headboard. The grin on Fitzpatrick’s face when he set the bottle aside looked nearly manic.

“How did you want to do this?”

It was all Jack could do to keep from touching himself as Fitzpatrick joined him on the bed, crawling up the mattress to settle between his spread legs. His mind stuttered and struggled for a response.

“Surprise me.”

Fitzpatrick grinned again, and finally he came close enough to lean in and press more kisses to Jack’s neck.

“Famous last words...”

Jack didn’t give his words a second thought. It was too easy to lose himself to Fitzpatrick’s touch instead, to the featherlight patterns he traced over his thighs and the agonizingly slow strokes that coaxed his cock to full attention, to the heavy haze in his mind that churned thicker and thicker with every kiss and bite and suck at his throat.

He’d almost lost himself entirely by the time Fitzpatrick pulled himself into his lap, by the time he ground against him with enough heat and strength to make him moan. Jack tugged him into another kiss before the moment was gone, not nearly as crushing as before but every bit as intense, sending small waves of pleasure down his spine with each slide of his tongue against Fitzpatrick’s, with each push and roll between their bare hips.

It seemed to him as though hours had passed when Fitzpatrick finally pulled back, another smile on his lips, but when he glanced down to see what he was doing with his hand—pumping a pair of glistening fingers in and out of himself—he knew they were just getting started.

“Fuck, Kyle...”

Fitzpatrick just laughed again as he shifted his weight to his knees, put a bracing hand on Jack’s shoulder, and wrapped the other around Jack’s straining cock.

“Almost—”

Anything else Fitzpatrick might have had to say was cut off by a choked groan as he sank down onto him. Jack could hardly keep from making a choked noise himself as he felt that tight heat on his cock, enveloping the entire length of him...

“ _Fuck—_ ”

All he heard in reply was yet another laugh. He realized dimly that, at some point, his hands had settled at Fitzpatrick’s hips and dug into his skin with a bruising grip. But Fitzpatrick didn’t seem to mind.

“That’s the idea...”

Fitzpatrick rocked forward as he spoke, moaning with the motion and pulling even more curses from Jack’s throat. Already Jack was lifting his hips to meet him, to keep from losing even a second of friction; already he could feel himself lost to the sensation, drowning in the pleasure that sparked up his spine.

Despite his short time in Rapture so far, he’d had far more extravagant trysts than this, and on many more than one occasion. But none had left him feeling so disoriented in the moment, so disconnected from himself as he did then.

Perhaps it was because of how powerfully he willed it to be so—how desperate he’d been to escape the inevitable.

It was so much easier to turn his thoughts to Fitzpatrick instead—to think of Fitzpatrick, to think of _Kyle_ instead of what truths he knew he would have to face, to hear his gasps and moans and soft murmurs instead of the echoing narrative in his head, to see the flush in his body and knit in his brow instead of those rows of infinite black, to feel the sweat-slick skin beneath his fingertips and the heat that engulfed him with each upward thrust...

It was so easy, he didn’t even notice himself tipping over the edge until it actually happened.

Jack came with a loud cry, his back arching away from the headboard as his hips stuttered and jerked and ground up into Fitzpatrick. It wasn’t until some long moments later, not until he had already started to wind down, that he felt folded arms cradling his head and parted lips against the corner of his jaw.

“Help me out?”

He was still catching his breath when he heard Fitzpatrick breathe the words into his ear, and he glanced down to see that he was still hard.

Afterglow was settled too deep in his senses for Jack to manage a verbal reply. But he complied nevertheless, loosely wrapping a hand around Fitzpatrick’s cock as he turned his head to kiss him again.

Fitzpatrick’s response was a pleased, purring moan, and he indulged Jack in a kiss as he lifted his hips into his lazy strokes. Before long, however, he was already pulling back.

“Hang on—don’t stop—”

Without moving from his position in Jack’s lap, he reached for the nightstand and began to rummage through its open drawer. Jack could only wonder dimly what he was searching for—but when he caught sight of a familiar blue glow, his dim wonderment was suddenly jerked into sharp clarity.

“Kyle, what—”

“Don’t stop—”

Fitzpatrick took the hand at his cock in one of his own, as if urging Jack to continue; in the other he clutched a large hypo, full to the brim with glowing EVE.

“Kyle—”

“Come on, faster—”

Jack was too taken aback to do anything but comply. He tightened his grip and jerked Fitzpatrick faster than before, watching with wide eyes as he released his hand and stretched out his arm, as he found some rhythm between rolling his hips into his touch and finding a vein with the tip of the needle.

“Just like that—”

He plunged the needle into his forearm, pressed down on the plunger, and gasped as the EVE vanished into his veins. It seemed to change color there, sending dark red pulses up his arm and casting his fingers with a bright inner glow. The moan he made was like nothing else Jack had ever heard, and soon enough he came, jerking hard into Jack’s grip and spilling all over his hand and chest.

Jack had no idea what to make of it. His thoughts were still too scattered by his own climax, and by everything that had come prior.

Fitzpatrick, on the other hand, seemed perfectly sated. He slumped forward onto Jack, nestling his face into the crook of Jack’s shoulder as his limbs fell totally loose. If it weren’t for the obvious solid state of his flesh and bones, Jack might have thought him about to melt entirely.

“ _Jesus_ , that was the best it’s ever been.”

Jack didn’t know what to say. He’d had some extravagant trysts, but he’d never seen anything quite like this.

Fortunately, Fitzpatrick still seemed not to notice. He pressed one last smoldering kiss against Jack’s neck before he pulled away, climbed out of Jack’s lap, and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

“Left my smokes by the piano...”

He stretched and shook out his limbs with a sigh, then turned back as he reached the threshold to the other room. Jack thought he saw a blue glow shining somewhere behind his eyes.

“You want one?”

He didn’t know what to say.

“I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself.”

Fitzpatrick left him then. For the second time that day, Jack found himself alone in the man’s bed.

When he had come here the night before, it was in search of some escape from the crushing inevitabilities that lay ahead of him. In that moment, however, he began to wonder if his means of escape was no less crushing than what was yet to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Fitzpatrick's set list from start to finish: ["Solace,"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5pfD7399C4) by Scott Joplin; ["Rhapsody in Blue,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kIpr6nSvjI) by George Gershwin; and ["Lilacs,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVIz9QjBRdA) by Sergei Rachmaninoff.


End file.
